Reprieve delivers justice and saves lives, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.
Reprieve delivers justice and saves lives, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.
We’ve all heard tales of celebrities and their diva-ish behaviour, and so a news story about a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother who claimed this morning that he’d been “tortured” is likely to be greeted with scepticism. When it becomes clear that this torture amounted to listening to some music, albeit for quite a long time, that scepticism would reach dizzying heights.
Parents of teenagers may be more sympathetic – as would someone who had been a guest of the US Government in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Or perhaps in Bagram Airbase, in Afghanistan, or any number of unknown prisons ...
Yet more evidence that the maintenance of capital punishment is an untenable position has emerged via the New York Times.
Adam Liptak wrote on Monday that The American Law Institute -- a group of lawyers and legal professionals which in 1926 created the modern framework for the death penalty as part of the Modern Penal Code -- announced that it was officially jettisoning support for, and work on, the death penalty. According to Liptak this represents “a tectonic shift in legal theory.”
Their decision follows an extensive report on the capital punishment system by the ALI in April 2009 which concluded that ...
Today at Guantánamo I met Samir Mukbel, one of Reprieve's Yemeni clients. I'm not allowed to say what he said at this meeting, but I can certainly tell you he bears no resemblance to the Yemeni bogeyman of recent cable news fame.
I know his story well from prior meetings. Samir is a simple man, a poor man, who from age 11 worked in a plastics factory in Ta'iz. His $50 monthly paycheck went entirely to support his family. When a man from his village told him he could make three times that in Afghanistan, Samir took ...
According to a report by the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), 2009 had the lowest number of death sentences handed down since the death penalty was brought back in 1976.
This means judges and jury members gave the death penalty to less convicted criminals in the past year, while prosecutors gave out less death sentences.
Only 106 people were sentenced to death which is significantly less than ten years ago (284 sentences in 1999), says the report. It is the 7th straight year of decline and 60% lower than in the nineties.
The report says that the recent economic ...
There is little doubt that when history comes to consider the first decade of the 21st century, it will not be forgotten that some Western governments were complicit in the use of torture techniques more at home in the 17th.
Nor will it be forgotten that in the course of fighting the wars that followed the shocking attacks of September 11, 2001, liberal democracies colluded in the illegal imprisonment of thousands of people, many of them entirely innocent.
But what might be forgotten, according to veteran human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, is the expansion of government secrecy powers that ...
Although Iran is signatory to the UN convention on the Rights of the Child stating that capital punishment should not be imposed on persons below eighteen years of age, several young offenders in Iran are hanged each year. Benyamin Rasouli is one of the youth who was sentenced to death, showing how the country does not hesitate to violate the UN convention to execute adolescents accused of murder, drug smuggling, or engagement in sexual relationships.
Benjamin Rasouli was eventually forgave by the victim's family. He tells his excruciating story in an interview by Benyamin by Saba Vasefi, showing This ...
In the wake of Akmal Shaikh's horrific execution, it is perhaps worth discussing the position taken by the Chinese in more depth. Cast aside for one moment the unassailable case that we made for his mental illness, and assume that Shaikh was truly guilty, and that the Chinese courts delivered something other than the mockery of justice that we encountered.
How would we then assess their claim – made officially through the Chinese embassy on Christmas Eve – that executing Shaikh was necessary because "150mg of heroin of high degree of purity would be lethal. The amount of heroin he carried ...
Over the past several days, most of Britain has been feet-up-before-the-fire, enjoying the Christmas holiday. Not so the family of Akmal Shaikh, the British prisoner who is set to die in China at 2.30am GMT on Tuesday.
I spent most of Christmas Day making travel arrangements for Akmal’s two cousins, Soohail and Nasir Shaikh, to fly 10,000 miles around the globe to plead for his life. They were allowed an hour and a half with him this morning, and emerged despondent. Akmal had only just been told he had 24 hours to live.
"He was obviously very ...
Time is running out for Akmal Shaikh, who is due to be executed in China on December 29.
Please join the campaign to save Akmal's life by writing to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and to the Chinese Ambassador to the UK Madam Fu Ying using the text below:
"Dear Prime Minister Brown / Ambassador Fu Ying,
I write to express my deep concern for Akmal Shaikh, who faces execution in China on December 29.
Akmal's family has pleaded for his life to be spared, and my heart is with them at this terrible time. Akmal's death, particularly during ...
Good news. Since the option of Life Without the Option of Parole has been put into place in Texas in 2005, the Los Angeles Times points out that the number of death sentences has decreased by 40 per cent (ie 2005 - 2009) compared to the four years before). Prosecutors have been pushing for fewer death sentences and juries have become less willing to give them.
Nine people were sentenced to death in Texas, in 2009 (as of December 14th), when juries sent 13 people to death row last year and 49 people 15 years ago.
"With life without parole being ...
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